Men are often reluctant to talk about their needs in intimate
relationships. Whether social conditioning or an inability to
communicate our needs are to blame, men (who tend to be the less
communicative partners in intimate relationships) are prone to silently
suffering when their emotional needs aren’t being met by their partners.
Whether you are a man or a woman reading this article, this will give
you greater clarity into yourself/partner and what your/their needs are
in your intimate relationship.
Let’s put an end to the needless fighting due to miscommunication, the unnecessary sex-less nights, and the verbal shut-downs.
Read through these tips and I promise you’ll never see your relationship through the same lens again.
Here are seven things all men need in a relationship.
7 Things All Men Need In A Relationship + How to give him what he wants!
1. Praise And Approval
Men have infamously tender egos.
We need frequent reassurance about ourselves, our career paths, our
efficacy as partners, our sexual prowess, and our attractiveness (among
other things).
I have countless male clients telling me every month that their partners rarely let them know what they like about them.
While it may be true that men need relatively less frequent verbal
praise than their female counterparts, this isn’t the kind of gesture
that requires keeping score. Why not just have more of a good thing?
So ladies, let your praise loose. Tell your man exactly what you find
attractive about him. Let him know what physical features of his are
your favourites. Tell him how attractive you find it when he says
something a certain way, when he accomplishes something, or when he
takes you on a date. Your praise won’t make him cocky; it will help him
feel loved.
And (bonus) the more you praise his positives, the more you will see them.
2. Respect
Men feel respect as love.
If he feels like you disapprove of him, his career, or the things that
he believes to be integral to who he is as a person, he will have a hard
time trusting and loving you.
The thought process behind that being “If she doesn’t respect who I am
at my core, then how can she really want what is best for me?”
If a man’s partner doesn’t respect his path or mission in life, then he
will find it very difficult to feel other than an anxious need to
distance himself from her.
3. A Sense Of Sexual Access
Men and women both connect through sex and communication, but generally,
women connect better through communication and men connect better
through sex.
Does this mean that men need to have sex with their intimate partners every day in order to feel connected? Not necessarily.
Men, more often than not, connect through indicators of sexual access just as much as they do through sex.
Allow me to explain…
Often, a man will initiate sex just to make sure that you are still
sexually available to him. So, to my man-loving readers out there, if he
reaches across the bed for you, even showing the willingness to embrace
him, to kiss him deeply, and to engage him could be enough to make him
feel loved (not that the follow through isn’t enjoyable).
This lack of awareness around women needing to connect through words and
men needing to connect through sex can sometimes turn into an
unfortunate and rapid downward spiral. She doesn’t feel like opening
sexually until she feels connected to him, but he finds it difficult to
communicate with her because they haven’t been physical with each other
in days.
Talk with your partner and ask what specifically helps them feel the most loved so you can avoid these unintentional standoffs.
4. Emotional Intimacy
From a very young age, men are taught to avoid appearing weak at all
costs. Perceived “weakness” includes things like complaining, divulging
fears or concerns, and expressing self-doubt or worry.
A man’s partner is his safe space to fall. He can expose the cracks in his armour and allow his partner to help him heal.
Just as women need to slowly open up sexually within a relationship, men open up over time emotionally.
He needs to make sure that when he first cries in front of you, you
won’t be repelled or handle it poorly. If you push him away or are
unable to be nurturing when he needs it the most, he will no longer
trust you with his emotions. He will remove himself somewhat from the
relationship.
In this instance, both partners lose- he goes on silently suffering and
believing that he is flawed in his imperfection, and she is held at
arm’s length emotionally.
5. Space
Author Deborah Tannen has written brilliantly on the masculine and
feminine divide between independence and intimacy (masculine being
primarily drawn towards independence and the feminine toward intimacy).
Within all of my relationships and the vast majority of my clients, I
consistently see that it is the feminine-associated female partner that
wants more time spent together and the masculine-associated male partner
wanting more time apart. There is no perfect balance to be found here.
This will always be a balancing act of closeness and separateness.
But rest assured, suffocating a man (either by failing to allow him free
time or with overly jealous behaviour) is the fastest way to end a
relationship. Men need breathing room in a relationship. We need time
for our hobbies, time with our friends, and time to toil away on our
projects to feel fulfilled.
Traditionally, when women (or the feminine associated partner) needed to
solve a problem, they would go further into the tribe – connecting with
close friends and family and discussing their issues. Conversely, when
men have a problem to solve, they would leave the tribe to be alone with
their thoughts.
So let him roam. Let him breathe. Leave him to his own devices. A man
will be that much happier for you to receive him when he returns,
knowing that you trust both him and the strength of your bond enough to
let him have his space.
6. Physical Touch
Men need frequent non-sexual touch as well as a sense of sexual access.
If a man’s partner comes up behind him and touches his neck and hair in a
loving way while he sits absorbed in a task, he could feel just as
loved as if they had just had penetrative sex (even more so, depending
on his mood).
This touch is interpreted as physical love- the message of which
registering as “I love you, and I want you to feel happy all the time.
Know that I’m always here for you and I care for you deeply.”
7. Security
Men and women are both attracted to certainty in a relationship. The
more a man feels like his partner is in it for the long haul, the more
ready and able he is to be able to open up to her (assuming he is
equally invested in her).
But security goes deeper than just the fact that you won’t leave him.
The security that he feels ties back in to several of these points. He
feels secure in knowing that you approve of him and where he is in his
career. He feels secure and loved when you touch him non-sexually
throughout the day. He feels secure when he is allowed to have his guys’
nights away from you and you don’t feel the need to call or text him
every half hour to check in.
And he feels secure with a partner who takes steps to love him in the way that he most needs.
How To Give Him What He Needs
So how do you stack up in your relationship?
If you are a man reading this, do you feel like all of your needs are
being met? Could you ask for your partner to do something differently?
(Maybe send her this article?)
If you are someone who is in a relationship with a man and you are
reading this, how could you love him more fully? Which of these can you
incorporate more of into your relationship?
Let this article (and the female equivalent) be the catalyst that gets
this conversation started between the two of you. Even if you don’t
agree with every point made, let these articles begin a dialogue about
both of your needs in your relationship.
Wrap Up
The overwhelming response to this article on the female side had several
mentions of the word blame. Defensive and angered cries shot out around
the interwebz (“It’s notallmen’s fault!”).
This isn’t about blame, or fault-finding, or anybody doing anything
wrong. This is about loving people in the best way that they could
possibly be loved and opening up a dialogue about emotional needs in
relationships.
-Jordan Day
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